


Enough

by Bookkbaby



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Asexual Castiel, Asexual Character, Comfort/Angst, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 21:50:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5391623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookkbaby/pseuds/Bookkbaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If I am… not enough,” Cas starts, voice hushed but quick. “Please, just… just tell me before you find someone else.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough

“Dean,” Cas whispers in the dark. “Are you awake?”

Dean had been just about to drift off to sleep, but there’s a note of hesitancy and unhappiness in Cas’s voice that Dean doesn’t like. He doesn’t want to brush Cas off with a ‘whatever it is, tell me in the morning’.

“What is it?” Dean asks quietly. Cas is lying half on top of him, head pillowed on Dean’s chest and leg thrown over Dean’s. It’s one of their preferred sleeping positions on those nights when one of them doesn’t need to be cradled by the other’s body.

Cas is silent for a moment. Dean would wonder if Cas had fallen asleep, but his body is tense and his breathing is uneven. Dean feels a sharp twinge of concern.

“If I am… not enough,” Cas starts, voice hushed but quick. “Please, just… just tell me before you find someone else.”

Cas’s voice wavers, nearly breaks at the end of his sentence. Dean feels like the air’s been punched out of his lungs.

“What?” he croaks. Cas seems to curl tighter in on himself.

“If I am not enough-”

“I heard you,” Dean snaps. Cas flinches. Dean immediately regrets his tone, but he couldn’t listen to Cas suggesting  _someone else_  one more time.

Dean swallows thickly and does his best to gentle his voice.

“Cas, babe, look at me,” he says. Cas moves slowly, reluctantly, and his face is a picture of misery and distress when he finally meets Dean’s eyes. Dean’s heart aches and he reaches forward to cup Cas’s face with a hand. Cas drops his gaze but tucks his cheek against Dean’s palm.

“What brought this on?” Dean asks. What had caused Cas to think he  _wasn’t enough_  for Dean?

Dean’s beginning to hate these drawn-out silences. They never precede anything good.

“… I know we don’t have sex as often as you’d like,” Cas admits quietly. Dean waits, but Cas offers no other reason.

Their (rather infrequent, Dean admits) sex life is what has Cas up in the middle of the night worrying that Dean isn’t happy with what they’ve got.

Dean takes a deep breath.

“Do  _you_  want to have sex more often?” he asks. Cas hesitates, which may as well be a neon sign spelling out his answer.

“Perhaps if we did it once a week-”

Dean snorts. He can’t help it, it’s either laugh or get angry, and he’s well past the point of shouting his way through any emotional conversation.

“What, like pencil it in on Fridays? ‘Have dinner, shower, blow Dean’?” Dean asks, unable to completely keep the edge of anger from his voice. Cas looks at him, eyes narrowed and lips pursed.

“I’m trying to compromise here, Dean,” Cas says. “I’m trying to give you what you need, so just-”

“Cas,” Dean says, lifting his other hand to cup Cas’s other cheek. He keeps his tone gentle, hoping to soothe Cas’s flared temper. Cas calms, but there’s still a hard glint in his eye. “Have I told you I needed more? Have I done something to make you think I’m not happy?”

Dean swallows thickly. The thought hurts; the idea that  _he_  is somehow responsible for Cas feeling inadequate when Dean can’t remember ever being so happy with his lot in life. Sure, they don’t have sex all that often, but Dean finds as time goes on that sex is less important than Cas curling up next to him in bed every night.

He wouldn’t trade seeing Cas’s sleepy, grumpy face in the mornings for anything in the world, much less a string of one-night-stands.

“… no,” Cas says quietly. “But I know how much you enjoy sex. I know that you used to enjoy another person’s touch every night, and now you’re… restricted.”

“You’re touching me right now,” Dean points out softly. The edges of Cas’s mouth droop down.

“Not sexually,” he replies.

“Maybe ‘sexually’ isn’t what I need,” Dean says. “Maybe this is all I need, right here.”

It still feels a little uncomfortable, laying himself bare like this for Cas. Dean’s more than comfortable with his body and laying his skin bare for a lover, but this emotional nakedness is new.

“Dean…” Cas says, voice unconvinced and heavy. Dean takes a deep, shuddering breath and digs deeper.

“Cas,” he says. “Do you really think I’d be happy having sex with you when you’re not- when it’s not something you want?”

Cas stills, eyes widening like he hasn’t thought about it in those terms. As if he hasn’t thought about  _himself_  at all, or his willingness as a necessary factor, only Dean’s supposed ‘needs’.

“Not when you put it like that,” Cas mumbles. He looks down. “I can try to want it more-”

“If you have to force yourself to want something, newflash, you probably don’t actually want it,” Dean bites out. He sighs and draws Cas’s gaze up to meet his again. “Cas, I’m good if you only want to have sex once a month. Or once a year. Or never.” He tests the thought, weighing the prospect of being celibate for the rest of his life versus sleeping in a lonely room with an empty bed and only the occasional faceless man or woman to help occupy it.

It’s not even a choice.

“If you decide tonight that we’re not going to have sex again, I’ll be fine,” Dean says.

“Shouldn’t you get a say in this?” Cas asks. Dean huffs out a laugh.

“I want you,” Dean says honestly. “I could have you once a night and twice on the weekends and I’d still want you.” He clears his throat. “But I don’t need it.”

Cas’s expression has gone flat.

“Then why won’t you let me-”

“Cas,” Dean interrupts, placing a finger on Cas’s lips. “ _I don’t need it_. I want you _here_ , just like this-” He nodded to indicate their fully-clothed but entwined forms. “-more than I want sex.”

“But if I could-” Cas starts, but Dean shakes his head.

“This isn’t something you can compromise on,” Dean says. His voice has a little bite to it. “You can’t  _make yourself_  want it just because you think it’ll make me _happy_ -”

An ugly thought occurs to him. His stomach drops and his blood runs suddenly cold, despite the heat of Cas next to him and the blankets wrapped around them.

“You haven’t, right?” Dean croaks. “The times we’ve- that wasn’t- I didn’t-”

“No,” Cas says immediately. “Of course not, I wouldn’t-” He pauses, briefly panicked and lost for words when he realizes that the conversation they’ve been having proves that  _yes_ , he would. “Dean, the times I’ve been with you, it has been because  _I_ wanted to. I wanted intimacy with you, I wanted _physical_  intimacy with you. Those are happy memories for me, I promise.”

Dean nods once, head jerking like an amateur puppeteer holds his strings.

“Good,” he says, though ‘good’ doesn’t feel like nearly enough to cover it. He pulls Cas down so he can wrap his arms around him and bury his face in Cas’s neck. His heart is still pounding, he still feels ill.

Cas holds him and Dean feels himself calm down.

“Don’t do that,” Dean says. “I don’t give a damn what you think I need, don’t you ever-” His voice cuts off. Cas nods slowly.

“I won’t,” he promises. It’s Cas’s turn to breathe deeply. “I really do enjoy intimacy with you, Dean. It’s just that, for me, intimacy very rarely takes the form of sex.”

Holding each other at night. Waking up together in the mornings. Cuddling on the couch while they watched movies. Making dinner together. Bathing together. Going on a drive. Eating dinner out with their hands clasped under the table.

Knowing when to push and when to leave well enough alone. Being there to help pick up the pieces and knowing how to slot them together.

Seeing even the broken, ugly parts of Dean’s soul and somehow deeming them beautiful and worthy of love. Somehow taking those broken pieces and making them whole again.

They were  _intimate_  every day regardless of whether or not they had sex.

“Cas, I love you,” Dean whispers. “Don’t apologize to me for being you.”

“And I love you, Dean,” Cas whispers back. “So much.”

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on tumblr!
> 
> bookkbaby.tumblr.com


End file.
